EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone (PC) review

On October 3, 2017 by Aaron Meehan

EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone, developed and published by CCP Games, is the VR free version of CCP Games’ space dogfighter, EVE: Valkyrie. EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone not only removes the VR requirement for PC and PlayStation 4 players but also opens up cross-platform play between PC, PlayStation 4 and VR players.

While it is great to see EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone open the game up to non-VR owners, the game is an overall dull experience. The various ships in EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone are frankly boring to pilot as the non-VR setup removes any sense of speed, I mean going full throttle feels like a brisk jog. The dull nature of EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone continues with its content, especially with its single-player modes whose existence could be considered nothing more than a tutorial for the multiplayer content.

The single-player content consists of a training mode, a short story mode called Recall, an exploration and gathering mode called Scout, and a wave-based survival mode called survival. While this may sound like a good deal of content, they are incredibly short with the story mode consisting of four missions, with one of them just requiring you to fly in a straight line. If only four missions wasn’t bad enough the whole story can be completed in about two hours. Although, I will say the final mission does a great job of teaching you how to tackle the multiplayer mode called “Carrier Assault”.

The survival mode, which consists of nine different maps, is a great mode for those who wish to practice taking on numerous ships at once as the survival mode throws an ever-growing number of ships at you until you are defeated.

The multiplayer mode, which is the main component of the game, allows for Player versus Player and Player versus AI combat in a randomised playlist containing all multiplayer modes and maps. The modes available are team deathmatch, control, extraction and carrier assault. In team deathmatch, you need to destroy enemy ships until they run out of respawns or have the least number of respawns when the timer hits zero. In control mode players are required to capture control points located on the map along with destroying enemy ships. Extraction has players gather relics that spawn throughout the map, your objective is to gather the relic and deliver it to the drop-off zone, but it’s more difficult than it looks at the enemy team will be chasing you down in an attempt to take the relic and score a point themselves. Carrier Assault, which is the most interesting multiplayer mode, is a multi-stage mode that has players attempting to destroy the opposing side’s carrier, to destroy the carrier you need to take control of three relay stations, which will disable the enemy carrier’s shields for a limited amount of time, while the shields are down you must target and destroy the ship’s cooling nodes while attempting to survive the carrier’s powerful weapons, once you destroy all the cooling nodes you need to destroy the carrier’s core and win the match.

EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone allows you to pilot over ten ships, which are broken down into support, heavy, covert and assault classes, along with class type each ship has a 1-3 star difficulty rating. Each ship also has an attack, defence, tech and mobility modifiers, which can be swapped out for new modifiers via your ship’s tech tree, to use the new modifiers you need to first unlock them by spending the experience your ship gains from taking part in battle.

So, as I said earlier the ship combat lacks a sense of speed, but how is combat overall? Well, it is an overall basic experience that mostly involves dancing around your opponent while trying to shoot at where the game says they’re going to be. With some ships, encounters can lead to simple lock-on missile spam, which is countered by flying away, using your ship ability action or hoping you can take the hit. Combat in EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone is rather dull, however, there are at times pockets of fun as you chase down and destroy an opponent who just can’t shake you off.

Conclusion

EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone is a rather dull multiplayer space dogfighting game. While the game does offer bouts of enjoyable combat, the game is an overall dull experience that offers limited replay value.